NHS IT problems cost hospital over £7m

The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust has lost £7.2m because of problems implementing National Programme for IT patient-administration software.

In a statement to GC News, the north London trust said that there have been a number of technical problems with the Cerner Millennium care-records system, and some have been "worse than anticipated".

According to the trust, a programme has now been set up with BT, the London Programme for IT and the system supplier Cerner to address these issues.

The system is being installed by BT as part of the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) and went live at the trust in June. The system is intended to speed up the booking process and help manage patient records.

The deficit appeared in a finance committee report to a trust board meeting on Thursday. "The committee was informed that the majority of the adverse variance to budget was due to the implementation of Cerner," states the report.

The report goes on to say that failures with the system led to many clinic and admission slots not being used. Lack of experience in using the system and "clunky workflows" resulted in data being entered incorrectly, or not being entered at all. Staff had been trained using a different system and there were no operating manuals.

In addition to being difficult to use, the system was also unstable, so that the trust's previous levels of efficiency fell. Extra staff were needed to rectify the problems with data entry and to maintain normal levels of data inputting.

The losses attributed by the report include £1.3m in lost activity and £1.2m in payments for additional staff.

A spokesperson for NHS Connecting for Health, the agency responsible for NPfIT, said that a significant improvement was expected by mid-December. "We know where problems have occurred and what needs to be done to get everything right," she said. "Together with NHS London and our suppliers, we have strengthened the team at the Royal Free Trust."

Conservative shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien said: "This cash should be used for caring for patients — instead it is pouring into the black hole of the government's supercomputer. Not only that, it is in addition to the £12.4bn of taxpayers' money already earmarked for the programme."

"High-quality IT could be benefiting patients and their families but, because of the structure of this centrally imposed programme, and the failure of [secretary of state for health] Alan Johnson to bring it under control, hospitals already hard-pressed by government deficits are suffering further, and patient care is suffering unnecessarily."